I had given some of my students popular English names, like Ashley, Nicholas (Nick), Monika, etc., but they have a section in the back of their dictionaries with the supposed meaning of these names. I've had the teacher make students change their names from, say, Ashley to Bessy, because Ashley is "not a good English name", according to this dictionary. They want a good English name, but it must also be a good name translated in Chinese! Go figure...

Here's to the Bessies, Agathas, Edisons, Florences, Francises, and Smiles of China!

Yeah, I've got a Panda, too, and a couple of Demon's, and a Kayt (male), and a Kim (male), and an Apple (male) and a Sky (male), and a Lick (male) who changed it to Like and then to Lewis, finally. And it's not that some of the names don't sound nice in Chinese, I think that, if the name doesn't mean something like loyal, responsible, trustworthy, etc., then it's not a "good" name.

With all the negative feeling going around with SARS it's good to see that some have kept their sense of humour, good posting Sunpower, Dudette and others. Please allow me to add my own contributions to this subject..

Apple (F)
Brown (M)
Bird (M)..he was a man in his late thirties who said that he was as free as a..
Superwoman (F), an 8 year old girl
Vicky (M), a young boy
Tiger (M),
Rainbow (F)
Rodman, Jordan, Pippin (all M), back when the Bulls were NBA champs

an elvis and bing in the same class.....i once had a King.....I had a vampire (now allen)...i have a Raff and an Apple, a Joy (male) and a Baby(now vicky) Eiffel, Einstein and i'm sure htere are more strange ones there's apparently a Job(good outdated biblical name).

Engine, Fan, Sweety, Dim, DooDoo ( I reused to call here that and we compromised on DoDo). My favorite was Spicy a 19 year old female that was the living image of that name. She would dress like Madonna for class. She did a great Sharon Stone impersonation.

and Kinki. We made Kinki change her name, but not until the last day of class. We never knew her name until then.

One problem, as has been mentioned, is that students want a name with a particular meaning, which limits their choices of common English names or turns them to the dictionary. Never mind that hardly any native speaker knows what most English names mean, it still has to have a good meaning. We try telling our students that most English-speaking parents choose a baby's name for reasons other than its meaning, but to no avail.